Posts by TonyJ

Europe slaps AliExpress with €550 million fine for selling dodgy goods

Re: curate's egg

"...it's usually pretty obvious..."

That's the thing though - it isn't.

Take a phone charger.

Looks fine. Feels fine. Even has a CE mark.

Pop it on a scope - noisy as all hell.

Open it up and - the weight comes from a lump of steel glued to the inside of the plastic case. There is no safety gap cut into the PCB between the mains voltage components and the low voltage components.

The components themselves can look ok or occasionally cheap as chips. Ditto the soldering.

But it feels ok and it charges your phone.

Right until it causes a fire.

Years after UK Post Office scandal broke, Accenture and OneView Commerce bag contract to replace Horizon

Why....

...are we not forcing Fujitsu to foot the bill for the transition?

They were found to have repeatedly lied. In court. Perjury. And walk away Scott free having ruining so many lives.

I wish someone in our government would grow a fucking pair and actually hold these fucking jokers to actual, punitive, account.

Same for the people in the know in the Post Office at the time. Make it come out of their personal fortunes and if it bankrupts them, tough bollocks.

The worst miscarriage of justice in UK history allowed to continue with a lot of salt rubbed into very painful wounds.

On-call techie decided job was done and hit the bottle – just before his pager went off

Re: Words that strike terror in the heart of anyone oncall

I once designed a large scale Citrix solution for a council. Their IT was being taken over by Capita and they (Capita) wanted it to last the full 5 years of the contract without needing any major upgrades.

Doable if you did it right, chose LTSC versions etc.

And, in fairness, the previous one I'd designed had lasted close to 7 years by this time. Yes it was designed and implemented to best practices but with Citrix (XenApp as was then) that was only about 40% of the game. The remaining credit had to go to the team looking after it. There was no patching discrepancies between hosts on either the OS or applications. The silos had been ruthlessly maintained, etc etc. In short it was probably the single best looked after implementation that I'd ever seen.

That same team did the actual installation this time, not me. I handed the designs over and walked away. The team that did the work - the one that had fed and watered the previous incarnation so well were let go shortly after.

Fast forward about 7 or 8 months and I got a call. Apparently, one by one, each of the new servers had failed in some way, but rather than do any kind of actual troubleshooting, they had simply turned the server off*.

The call was to ask if I would come and troubleshoot it as they now had something like 3 hosts trying to cater for over 1,000 users! I was open to doing so right until this comment: "But we don't want you to waste time repeated our troubleshooting. We will tell you where to start".

Not a chance! If you want me to troubleshoot, I do it my way. Methodically, step by step, looking at everything from the ground up.

I bailed. No way I was getting involved in that bullshit.

*They had originally insisted in using bare metal rather than virtualisation. On the one had a massive waste of resources. On the other, it probably allowed them to keep them running as they turned boxes off.

PowerPoint punishment sent users into an infinite loop after lunch

Windows 95?

Pretty sure it didn't have a native ability to lock.

Competition watchdog cracks knuckles, probes legality of Adobe cancellation fee

Re: fees on membership plans

It used to be a massive problem in the UK, back in the day with things like wine, magazine or music (tape/CD etc) "clubs".

It's classic dark patterns - make it as difficult to cancel as possible - you have a limited window, have to write in to a specific address using specific words, have to send back what was previously sent to you but would cost an arm and a leg. etc etc.

I don't know if gyms are still guilty of it, but they used to use tactics such as having to visit a specific gym on a specific day and time to speak to the only person who could approve the cancellation that you had to also bring in writing. Not their problem if said person wasn't there when you tried etc.

For online subscriptions where there is nothing tangible exchanging hands, this sort of thing should be illegal.

My own other pet hate is booking sites that charge a "booking fee" despite it being done online and no physical tickets changing hands. Also should be utterly illegal.

Bullshit and greed

IF it is clearly in the contract that's one thing

But also IF I am going to be charged 50% of the remaining subscription then I better well GET 50% of the remaining subscription. Otherwise this smells strongly of fraud - pay for a service you don't actually get...

However, as an aside, this is why avoiding subscription-based software is the best approach where possible.

It's driven purely by greed.

Blustering Blackbeard's PC was all at sea, sysadmin got him shipshape in seconds

Re: A switch...

Could be Cyprus, just for one alternative...

I mean, it isn't, but it could've been.

A switch...

A couple of times, actually.

I used to repair Word Processors. Not the fancy Amstrad types - the Sharp ones. They had a soft power button on the keyboard but also a physical power switch on the left side towards the back.

I can't count the number of times I took a support call to say flick the power switch.

But also an ex girlfriend. She was studying a masters and had previously got by with very basic electronic typewriters - alas one with a built in memory which she'd not got around to printing out anything when it died. There was nothing I could do at that point, so I got her a cheap (for the time - this was the late 90's) laptop and even managed to cadge a laser printer.

We'd actually split up by the time this happened but she called me in a mad panic because the laptop was dead. It took me a couple of moments to calm her down then eventually work out she'd left it plugged in to charge but hadn't turned the socket on. No nice critically low battery warnings back then. Click. Charging. Powered up.

That was not actually the first or last time I ever heard from her, but it was only ever when she needed help, so when she called me again a few months later for yet more tech support I politely refused. I never heard from her again.

Xen Project quietly announced five years of support for all releases

Does anyone use Xen anymore?

Genuine question - I can't think of any of my customers using it.

And for any that are why would they trust Citrix after their whole "dropping it, keeping it" game?

And I guess, the follow-on question is why would anyone use Citrix at all these days? I haven't even seen a NetScaler (or whatever name it has this week) in the wild in a few years.

Engineer held hostage by client who asked for the wrong fix

Banned from the site?

Good! Sounds like future bullets dodged, if you ask me.

I once did an upgrade from Exchange 2000 to 2003 for a company in London. They head of IT has explicitly banned my colleague from going, and I was the only one with experience of clustered Exchange at that time.

Imagine my surprise when I walked in on him, on a call to said banned colleague, complaining he didn't think I was as good as him and questioning what I was doing.

Worthwhile explaining that I'd trained said colleague on Exchange.

Anyway I laid down the law with the customer - either trust me to get this done, or I will back out, pack up and leave, and he can have my colleague back but either way, stop going behind my back. Have a problem with me or anything I am doing, tell me to my face. Funny how he relented.

I was sent back three weeks later because the server had stopped delivering email and no one could even connect Outlook to it. I walked in and on the screen of one of the nodes, the mail cleaner software (I forget which one now - it's over two decades ago) was showing a message that said something like "Upgrade on this node is completed, now move to the second node <name> to complete the installation. NOTE that Exchange services cannot be started on either node until this step is completed". I pointed at it and and he admitted that he had part installed an upgrade then left it in that state. He then stated that felt it was our fault it hadn't been finished and I needed to finish it. Of course it smelled fishy to me (thinking he'd tried and it wasn't installing so he was hoping for some free extra support) so I turned around and walked out.

He tried to block the lift to stop me until I gave him the option of stepping aside or the police would be called. What I really felt like was saying was "or I'd move him aside", but he was exactly the kind of person who would then himself call the police and it would have been career limiting.

I self-banned myself from that site for any future work that came up.

Break free of Ring's servers, earn a five-figure bounty

Re: Why even bother?

I grant you that the Unifi camera doorbells are not cheap - the Protect G4 (non pro) I have was £201.11 - that is NOT an inexpensive outlay.

For me, it was a no brainer as I already had the AP's and Cloud Gateway.

Where I do disagree though is the quality - I find it to be crystal clear day or night.

In my wife's café we have a handful of Arenti cameras. They are accessible over the internet using their app as well as ONVIF compliant. They are PTZ, and record to uSD card.

They do try to sell their cloud but don't need it. You do lose the AI element, that is true, but they were just under £35 a pop.

Re: Why even bother?

I'd forgotten about that which is odd as I actually ran a containerised instance for a while on my TrueNAS server!

Why even bother?

I don't mean breaking them to work locally - that's a nice earner for the first to do it, but I mean as a consumer.

Just use one of the many alternatives that don't go to a cloud - Eufy or Ubiquiti, for example. I've had both and though the Eufy was good it became very unreliable as time went on, and their support was less than fantastic - they'd try everything in their power to blame everything but their own kit.

As I'd already got Ubiquiti AP's and a cloud gateway, it was a no-brainer when switching.

However, both are very similar in features, were for me at the time parity with price (notwithstanding the additional gateway device) and just work. And there are many other brands out there that work without a cloud connection.

I'm actually in the process of trying to remove anything that requires an ongoing subscription, let alone cloud connectivity. It's a slow process but one I am enjoying.

The likes of Home Assistant are very useful for such things, I have to say.

Contain your Windows apps inside Linux Windows

Re: There's also Steam/Proton

Tried it but could never get Office to install.

I've tried both

And they work well.

However they both also suffer from the same issues (worth noting this was last tested a few months ago): You don't get unique icons for the Windows VM applications, you get the one last opened - so, for example, if you open Word then Outlook, the Word icon goes and is replaced with Outlook and you can then choose which to go to from that one icon.

Things often hang or crash for no apparent reason.

Closing all applications quite often doesn't shut them down on the VM and this can lead to needing a reboot.

I think I had a few other issues here and there but I can't recall them all now.

It's also worth noting that I've run it in various different distros and on different physical hardware and still experienced the issues.

Personally, I've found OnlyOffice a much easier solution. It seems to have truly excellent compatibility (much more so than LibreOffice) with Office files, has a clean and modern interface and just works well. I still have doubts around it's alleged Russian contacts, but so far it doesn't seem to have tried to to anything nefarious. Obviously, YMMV.

DVSA seeks £95K digital chief to steer test booking system out of the ditch

It's not even as if the answer is very complicated: make the system so that only the learner (or someone with access to their details such as a parent) can book a test.

There is no reason why a driving instruction company should ever need to book them on a student's behalf.

The problem literally disappears overnight.

BBC bumps telly tax to £180 as Netflix lurks with cheaper tiers

I don't actually mind the subscription to the BBC...

...but what I do mind is it being a criminal act to watch TV without one.

To me, it should be like all of the other services - you want to watch, you pay. You don't, you don't, but you should never face court action for simply not having a subscription.

See also fare dodging - I have no problem chasing people through civil action but it should not be possible for a company (whether public or private) to prosecute people without it going via the police and CPS.

After all, the Post Office had that power and look how that got abused, even when Second Sight were warning them of how unsound the charges being levelled were.

Broadcom 'bulldozes' VMware cloud partners as March deadline looms

Wrong, eh?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/broadcom-sends-cease-and-desist-letters-to-subscription-less-vmware-users/

And if you read through it, because at first, and on the face of it, it doesn't start off too unreasonable-sounding: i.e. stop getting updates outside of your support contract, as you say, you will see this:

"...Some customers of Members IT Group, a managed services provider (MSP) in Canada, have received this letter, despite not receiving VMware updates since their support contracts expired, CTO Dean Colpitts told Ars. One customer, he said, received a letter six days after their support contract expired..."

So notwithstanding they were seemingly allowing out-of-support systems to update themselves, they also targeted owners of systems who hadn't done this.

And I would argue given the complexities of large companies, where, as you say the license renewals are handled by different departments, it's on the supplier to block such downloads in the first place once a support license expires. Others manage it fine.

There were some examples posted online last year, of cease and desist letters being sent from Broadcom to customers, telling them that they could no longer use their perpetual licenses...

Windows 11 shutdown bug forces Microsoft into out-of-band damage control

Re: Just wait a bit longer

Don't you remember downloading anything over dialup on Windows?

We all called it Microsoft Time for a reason. They've never, ever, had a handle on it.

They didn't sack them...they just...reassigned their users into that role.

Re: Testing

Dunno... I'd argue it isn't seemingly doing a worse job. Just more of the same.

Marketing 'genius' destroyed a printer by trying to fix a paper jam

Memories...

This brings back memories of printer repairs in the mid 90's.

I didn't actually work on them but my friend did. The sheer volume that he got back damaged because someone had dragged a jammed page through rather than opening the correct doors and relieving pressure from feeds was staggering.

UK backtracks on digital ID requirement for right to work

Re: O Rly?

"...Are you one of those people who thinks the "illegal immigration problem" is mostly fuelled by people arriving in rubber dinghies? You know the overwhelming majority of irregulars come into the UK on a valid visa, right? And once they are in ..."

Try as I might, I can't get the point you seem to be trying to make.

Someone comes in on a visa with the right to work - they will have the necessary paperwork.

Someone comes in on say a holiday visa with no right to work - they will not have the necessary paperwork.

My point (which at no point made reference to rubber dinghies - hell of a leap you made) stands - people who use illegal workers will continue to do so. Legal workers already have ways to prove they are just that - legal.

Do you understand that? Let me say it again for you - people who are legally allowed to work will have the necessary paperwork already.

Not everything has to be warped to fit your own twisted narratives. The point I made was hardly ambiguous. Or contentious.

I suggest trying to educate yourself more. Perhaps learn to read.

Although, the fact you responded anonymously, rather suggests to me that you are trolling, so this is my one and only response to you.

Re: O Rly?

You mean the ones without a National Insurance number? Or a Tax Code (UTR), or the already-required right to work documentation?

If people are already working illegally - or let's rephrase that: if employers are already utilising illegal labour then why would yet another ID document actually be of any use?

Ofcom officially investigating X as Grok's nudify button stays switched on

Re: VAWG ? Really ?

And for most of us here, the response is "No shit!"

Re: Consent and legality

"..This is just a pretext to shut-down the last free speech forum on the Internet..."

OK...I will bite.

1 - And this is a big one: Free speech is NOT the same thing as freedom from consequences. Again, this is not a difficult concept and yet so many people seem to think it means the same

2 - So you think Musk/X have never chosen to censor anything? Ok then. I mean... he only initiated legal action against the kid posting details of where his private jet was / was heading.

3 - If you really, truly, think that that cesspit of hate is the last bastion of free speech you are seriously, and quite dangerously, deluded.

Consent and legality

1 - Making sexualised images of adults without their consent. I struggle to wrap my head around why so many seemingly otherwise intelligent adults struggle with one word. Consent. There is a reason it's important.

2 - Making sexualised images of minors. Now I really fucking struggle to understand why anyone, anywhere, thinks this should ever be allowed on any platform, anywhere.

For point 1, I don't really care if piss-take images of Starmer and/or Paedoguy in a bikini is generated - clearly fake, clearly meant to be insulting/ funny/both. Sad as it can be, people in the public eye are targets of such things. However, taking it further and creating [realistic] nudes - or worse - of them without any consent is several steps too far. That word again.

And why do the concepts of consent and illegality = censorship? Yes, I appreciate in some cases it can be used to stifle people without power etc, but we aren't talking about that here. It's fairly cut and dry.

Implement the guardrails or face the negative consequences.

Fake Windows BSODs check in at Europe's hotels to con staff into running malware

Re: Other approach

My wife got a text last year confirming a booking, supposedly from booking.com for a reservation it said I'd made, of course with a link to a site.

It confused her, as I was due to work away at that time, but nowhere near to that location and, obviously, I hadn't booked it.

The weird part is that they had my details in terms of name etc, but her mobile number - we both have accounts on booking.com.

When I forwarded a complaint to booking.com their answer was "don't worry, that is a hotel that accepts bookings through our site".

I try to use hotels own sites where possible.

'Windows sucks,' former Microsoft engineer says, explains how to fix it

Thumbs up

It's hard not to agree.

Fuck off, Microsoft. It's my computer, my operating system. Let me use it how I see fit.

And yeah, stop trying to send back every fucking detail of what I am doing at any given point. As Dave says - diagnostics data, I can consent to, but I'd also like the option of telling it "No, don't send that report, thanks, as it has confidential customer data in it"

And this constant shitty idea of moving away from the control panel - well it's shitty full stop, but the way it's executed in dribs and drabs. It's bad enough when a setting has moved and/or morphed into something unexpected. It's even worse when it exists in both places.

I'd switch hardcore mode on in a second.

Game on! Penguin levels up as Linux finally cracks 3% on Steam

Re: Oh how I wish...

Didn't work for me when I tried it.

Re: Oh how I wish...

WinApps is great but has issues. Things like (and this is a few months since I last tested it) that you only get the icon of the last application opened and file type association is a mixed bag.

WinBoat works quite well, but also has the same kind of issues (I believe it's a fork of WinApps, so unsurprising).

I actually like OnlyOffice - it has superb compatibility but the very obscure Russian ties are a bit objectionable.

I must admit I have not tried Office under Proton - I couldn't see any way of making it work via it. I will revisit.

Oh how I wish...

Steam would turn their Proton engine-eyes to Microsoft Office. That is the one single suite that stops me moving my daily driver.

And no, LibreOffice (or the hideous online apps) doesn't cut it, before you say.

O2 cranks prices mid-contract, essentially telling customers to like it or lump it

Ofcom are useless.

I'd been with EE for years (out of contract, SIM-only) but at that time they didn't do unlimited data plans and so I made a very temporary move to Three (terrible coverage back then).

When I went back to EE, I signed a 24 month contract. It was for two numbers - my own and one for my son.

For his, I took only 25GB of data, because on the call I was assured I could gift 100GB a month of my own allowance.

Except:

1. You can't. You can only ever gift a maximum of 99.5GB - it won't let you gift the last 500MB - that's potentially a lot of data they are stealing from customers.

2. Because they have such antiquated systems, they have to add a "100GB pot" onto your unlimited data - and it's from this "pot" that you can gift.

3. Except - any data you use is first taken from that pot, so unless you remember to gift it at the start of each month, you lose out what you can gift

Nowhere on EE's site or in my contract were these terms noted.

Nowhere was it explained during the time I took out the contract.

No one I spoke to at EE in their support teams knew this was the case except for one person in their (I think) third line who I was put through to because "Oh I know someone who can explain this"

So I complained.

Ofcom were utterly useless.

The kept saying "It clearly states you can gift up to 100GB of data" - without listening to the root cause of my complaint.

They then - and this is the kicker - referred to the contract uploaded by EE. Not a copy of my signed contract. Oh no. An updated one that was more descriptive and dated some months after the version I signed. And refused to listen when I explained it. They just kept saying "but it's in the contract".

Fucking pointless entity.

Amazon axes 14,000 desk jobs in AI-powered slimming plan

Re: no shit sherlock

Plus they'll just buy into it and send e.g. Google and few hundred million £ rather than investing in UK talent and infrastructure companies.

Microsoft agrees to 11th hour Win 10 end of life concessions

The thing is, I don't think many people would have cared too much about the EoL for Windows 10, except for:

1. "This is the last version of Windows you'll ever need to buy because it will be upgraded forever" false promise

2. Your perfectly fine computer, which does everything you need it to, and fast enough, isn't "secure enough" to run Windows 11 so you will need to buy another

I would even think most customers would overlook 1. and say "oh well, it got 10 years of support and upgrades" if 2. weren't such a shitty problem to be handed.

And, of course, it has to be mentioned:

3. The Windows 11 UI is still such a mess. Why MS let the kids decide that the paradigm used up to Windows 7 needed to be completely thrown out and redesigned (also seemingly by kids who clearly never have to sit and use the fucking thing) is beyond me.

Personally, if I could get full-fat MS Office to run seamlessly under Linux it'd be a switch I'd make tomorrow for my daily driver, but unfortunately tools and workflows and plugins (agh!) mean this isn't possible for me.

Zorin OS 18 beta makes Linux look like anything but Linux

Clearly you have never installed Zorin, because it's installer is simple.

Word to the wise: Don't tell your IT manager they're not in Excel

Re: "Surely an IT manager should know the difference between Word and Excel?"

I agree with this.

CEO? Doesn't care, doesn't need to know.

"IT Manager", though? Clue's in the title. Or so you would hope.

Sky plans to ditch up to 500 staff in the Technology Group

Re: Vote with your feet

The thing is though, this is one of the tricks they use to keep people.

The real question you need to ask yourself as a consumer of it is: "How much do I watch, that I can't get elsewhere, for less or free?"

And that's a personal thing but for me and my family it was "bugger all". Which made making the cut very easy.

There were moans for a few weeks with the Freesat (less so once I put a Sky-like skin onto the box), but that is one of the ironies - it wasn't "Oh, I can't watch x, now" it was "where do I find y, again?"

I know Freesat/Free to Air is slated for removal in favour of streaming, but even then - that question of whether you watch enough to justify the price or just keep it from habit/fear you may miss something etc should be asked and answered honestly.

I used to have Sky Q, with two additional mini-Q boxes and the full package.

Historically I had it for some sport (F1, some of the WWE for my kids), films (mostly my kids) etc.

But then, about 10 years ago they wanted to uptick the price and it was going to be over £100 a month.

For TV.

Nothing else - no broadband, no phones, just TV.

I cancelled.

They offered to more than halve the price if I signed a new two year deal.

I'd been a customer since about 1992.

But for me, the biggest realisation came from realising that no one actually watched enough premium content to justify the costs, even halved, so I proceeded with the cancellation, swapped back to a hybrid LNB and went freesat.

And, with a Linux based freesat receiver, I can even pipe live TV to any other TV via Plex.

Well over £1,000 a year for close to a decade saved in subs alone. That's a car.

Flu jab email mishap exposes hundreds of students' personal data

One of my personal bugbears

Both of my boys went to the same secondary school and parent communications was lamentable.

At first (2013) they used SharePoint with a custom app - whilst it had its issues (primarily a lack of teacher training on it), at least it was a single point of information.

Then they moved to an app by another company (can't recall off the top of my head) as well as switching to Facebook. The app itself was ok (again mostly problematic due to a lack of teacher training) but often they would put different information - sometimes even contradictory information - on each of them.

Then they added Twitter.

Then they swapped to another app but that had zero details in it. They eventually shut down their FB and Twitter accounts and moved to yet another hot mess of an app.

And between all of the options they had, they still didn't get it right. Often didn't send out the right information or in good time - and of course it was the parents' fault! I tried to explain, many times, to the many different headmasters and principals that if me, working in IT, found it a confusing, hot mess, then how about parents who don't work in IT?

I am amazed, given their decisions and the constant moving from one app to another etc that they didn't ever experience a breach.

Citrix products sold under old licenses will get glitchy unless users upgrade

Another nail

They are hellbent on hosing their own business.

I built my early career on Citrix products - I would honestly go so far as to say I knew more about them than anyone outside of Citrix themselves.

However, I saw that their core reason to exist - granting users access to applications remotely / over poor links being ever more eroded.

First by Microsoft RDS - after all, given you have to license RDS CALS anyway, what does Citrix bring to the table? Yes, they stayed ahead slightly (seamless applications, better controls over data management, more scalable etc etc) but MS were always snapping at their heels and you always got the feeling that they could steamroller their business at any given time.

NetScaler's came along - I am old enough to remember them buying the business - which, at the time, gave functionality noone else had. At a cost. At a very high cost. But, if you needed that functionality then it was money well spent.

These days... not so much.

And of course, applications moved ever more to being natively web based anyway so even that initial rationale to have Citrix dwindled.

So now, they want to force customers down what will become an ever increasingly expensive subscription license AND hose their previously purchased licenses.

Nah...

I am forever amazed they cling onto life but I cannot see them being around in 4 or 5 years time.

Fujitsu under fire for bidding on UK public sector deals despite Horizon scandal vow

Re: Fushitesu

Oh no..no, no, no.

They're too busy laughing to the (offshore) bank paying in the contents of their brown envelopes.

The Horizon scandal has gone on way too long. It is beyond time those poor souls got the compensation they deserve. Ideally paid personally by the lying bastard executives that sent them there and every other scumbag that committed perjury. Bankrupt? Lost your house? Boo fucking hoo - just like happened to the sub postmasters.

After which, they can then be jailed.

Another failure by Starmer who lyingly promised he'd sort this shit out.

I have zero trust, zero respect for any politician, whatever colour badge they wear these days.

Supermarket giant Tesco sues VMware, warns lack of support could disrupt food supply

Re: Popcorn time

Yep and customers will pay the costs.

Should UK.gov save money by looking for open source alternatives to Microsoft? You decide

Meanwhile...

Some of the comments are spot on.

In house techs full stop, not just developers. But maybe use some of the money to pay reasonable rates. An agency rang me a few weeks ago about a head of architecture role in the public sector. Not that I am actively looking to change right now, but always willing to listen.

Paying £55,000 - £65,000. Let that sink in for a moment. A director-level role at less than the average going rate of a solution architect...

Ah but the pension contribution was almost 30%. Great but I'd much rather get 10% on an actual market wage than 30% and struggle to live day-to-day.

And herein lies a common problem: these same underpaid, often underskilled*, people are the ones being put in front of corporations like Microsoft and told to negotiate.

They are also not given the power to actually do it. Walk away? Investigate any alternatives, not just FOSS? Not a chance. And the guys on the other side of the table know it.

Then there's the fact that any programme of works, despite what the RFI etc say, will bias towards the cheapest offer. They ignore it being wrapped in so much change control that it ends up costing orders of magnitude more in the long run. And it's down to the same lack of capability and ability to say "nah this cheapest deal really isn't the best".

The whole system needs an overhaul. As others have said the whole "don't spend it, lose it" budget concept is warped but then in a way, so is punishing a department for being fiscally aware. Let them keep the excess and review it every few years. Something like "ok you handled that well, you can keep the surplus but we're going to cut x from it for the next few years". But... not to the bone. Give them a little slack/reward for being good with it so they aren't burning through the excess to cover the new shortfall.

*Not always. I've worked with some very capable people in the public sector. There just need to be more.

Ebuyer website bought by Fraser Group plc

Re: Sad times

According the Wetherspoons themselves, this "use by" argument is a myth. To the point they've even threatened to sue any publications that repeat this.

They claim is they simply have buying power (thousands of kegs), are not locked into a single brewer, so can move around as needed, lock themselves into very long term deals and, because they open longer, their fixed costs are over a longer period of time.

I am utterly ambivalent towards them. I've been in some very nice Wetherspoons over the years and some you'd politely call shitholes but on the whole they do what they say on the tin - cheap booze, cheap food all done ok.

S

I see one of the PCS Forum admins are here

/S

:-)

I walked away from PC Specialist after one machine.

The BIOS was crippled to the point you couldn't turn on virtualisation extensions.

They wouldn't release a non-noddy BIOS.

There warranty states you need their permission to flash a laptop BIOS and they are adamant there is no reason to need to do it, notwithstanding the raft of security patches.

And the forums were full of self-important "experts" who were, frankly, bullying arseholes.

My machine. My hardware. I want to flash it as and when I see fit. BIOS's haven't "bricked" due to failed flashing for decades. They all have a read only recovery component.

And forget about asking if a certain machine can run Linux!

Network scans find Linux is growing on business desktops, laptops

To a large extent.

All the people and especially all the companies that have invested heavily in Windows 10 devices that then wont run or install Windows 11 despite being perfectly operational devices... that is a bitter pill to swallow for some.

And lets face it the single biggest stumbling block to mass migration is an inability to run native MS Office (and no...for an awful lot of users, the web versions or LibreOffice et al do not cut it). In my current testing, I have found OnlyOffice to have superb compatibility, but I suspect it's ties to Russia (which they also try to obfuscate) worry most adopters.

Re: Can't wait to see the figures...

In an awful lot of corporate settings, it already has. They tend not to wait until the current OS has gone EoL before rolling out the next one as it takes time to ensure it works across different hardware models, applications etc etc.